Fake Outrage in Kentucky

Kentucky may be home to the country’s most closely watched Senate race, but it is no place for loose talk about Nazis. That, at least, is something Kelsey Cooper feels very strongly about. So when Cooper, the spokeswoman for the state’s Republican Party, heard that a supporter of Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate, compared the defeat of the incumbent, Mitch McConnell, to the liberation of Europe, the young operative snapped into peak indignation mode. Cooper issued a statement calling it “completely inappropriate” and “appalling.” “That kind of hateful rhetoric,” Cooper said, “has no place in public discourse in our beloved Commonwealth.” She demanded a “heartfelt apology” from Grimes.

To no one’s surprise, Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, did not apologize, heartily or otherwise. Neither did her spokeswoman, Charly Norton, who had just been in the throes of her own conniption-by-news-release. It involved an incident in which someone at the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent out a link to a picture of Grimes’s head superimposed over the body of Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, the singing viral sensation. Norton accused McConnell’s campaign of implying that Grimes was “asking for it” — even though no one ever used that expression or even insinuated the association. But that was beside the point. No Grimes supporter, after all, had ever used the word “Nazi.”

All is fair in the fog of fake outrage. McConnell and Grimes may be the main combatants, but the front lines of affront in this Bluegrass State battle are occupied by the competing spokeswomen, Norton and Cooper. They brim with enthusiasm for their jobs, their candidates and their country. But perhaps more important, they are fluent in the lingua franca of chagrin, and eager to share with us — via clinically composed news release, email, tweet or whatever — how deeply troubled and appalled they are by something their opponent did, didn’t do or might possibly be associated with (they’ll leave it to the people of Kentucky to decide). Recently Cooper was beside herself that Grimes would accept a campaign donation from Woody Allen. Norton was horrified that McConnell, the Senate minority leader, would “laugh in the faces of more than 18,000 unemployed Kentuckians.”

Not long ago, the privilege of speaking publicly on behalf of a candidate belonged to a select few operatives, usually 40- and 50-somethings who spoke with deliberate authority and, in the case of Senate races, often had deep ties to the candidates, the state and political reporters. Things have changed. Norton and Cooper, 25 and 23 respectively, are typical of young political operatives at work today. Each speaks with a Southern accent, though neither is from the South, let alone Kentucky. When this race is settled, there’s a good chance each will turn up working for another candidate somewhere else, condemning the dishonest attacks of their opponents, demanding apologies that will never come and telling us what the people of said state are sick and tired of. The job now requires no special education or experience, no roots to a state and no affiliation with a candidate. The prized skill set is merely the ability to get your noise heard above the rest of the cacophony, which, of course, just creates more noise.

Before Joe McGinniss’s “Selling of the President” was published, in 1969, the scheming of politics occurred mostly backstage. “It was not something you wanted your mother-in-law to know that you did for a living,” Barry Schwartz a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and co-author of “Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing” told me. “Now it is something that campaigns want to boast about. They want everyone to know how well they’re playing the parlor game.” And compared with even five years ago, political races now exist fully in an anarchic hyperspace that creates a synergy of desperation between the feeders and the beasts. “Sometimes I would put out a bunch of press releases, and some reporter will call and say, ‘You know the other guys are putting out more stuff,’ ” says Brian Walsh, a former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The media, Walsh says, is as invested in the game of back and forth as the actual campaigns are “even though we all laugh at the cheesiness,” he says.

Sheepishness over risking a campaign’s dignity with a tacky Twitter stunt does not exist. In fact, campaigns, as Walsh suggests, even those of the Senate minority leader, tend to be ostentatious about what they did, why they did it and how many people liked it on Facebook. In his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, argues that the culture has shifted toward promoting social and professional manipulation over morality. “Our reasoning appears to have evolved not to help us seek the truth but to help us win arguments.” If you were stuck, for example, in one of those bladder-bursting traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge, you may not have been wondering if your misery was feeding into Chris Christie’s problematic “bullying narrative.” But his ability to navigate a public-relations crisis became the prevailing data point.

Our cultural orientation has taken a sharp turn into a realm of tactical deftness. On Feb. 14, for instance, both the Grimes and McConnell campaigns were feeling deep wells of love — at least for their own cleverness. They each issued — via Twitter, Facebook or email bombs, etc. — heart-filled Valentine greetings to their opponents. Grimes’s card informed the incumbent senator that voters would be “breaking up” with him after almost 30 years. On the other side, “Team Mitch” sent a greeting that featured a very unflattering photo of Grimes with President Obama and a link to many unkind statements about both. The gimmicks each garnered mention (“pick up”) in the media.

When I called to ask the young spokeswomen about their latest artistry, neither Norton nor Cooper was willing to say much to me on the record. Rather, they offered to send copies of previously issued statements and news releases. “I’m going to let the Republican Party of Kentucky speak for itself,” Cooper told me.

“But don’t you work for the Republican Party of Kentucky?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m their communications director.”

“So don’t you speak for them?”

“If my name is attached to a statement, which most of the time it is, I’m speaking on behalf of the Republican Party of Kentucky,” she explained.

Norton said that the Grimes campaign “does not participate in general ‘process stories,’ because we want to keep the focus on the campaign.” But this is about the campaign, I insisted. “If you have specific questions that you want to send over, we can see if that’s something that we want to do,” she said.

I asked both Cooper and Norton whether they believed their statements, gimmicks and daily spews of umbrage were actually persuading any voters in Kentucky to vote for their candidates.

“On the record?” Cooper said.

Yes.

“I mean, I’m not sure if I’m well educated enough on the issue to speak about that,” she said. Norton promised to get back to me. Both seemed to find my questions appalling.

Mark Leibovich is the magazine’s chief national correspondent.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 16 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘All Is Fair in the Fog of Fake Outrage’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe